Morning Prayer Friday, 15 January 2021

Good morning on this cold and grey Friday at the end of a rather cold and grey week. There’s not even any snow to turn the dirty street – briefly – to a pristine white. There are no snowdrops yet on my walk through the park and the fallen leaves have turned to sludge. At this time of year, we think about John the Baptist and his baptising Jesus in the Jordan wilderness – or an MK grey January day. Let’s enjoy the brilliance of the Coventry Cathedral baptistry window with its font carved from a Bethlehem boulder

Lord God of love and light we thank you for the gift of rest and refreshment. Despite our wintry world you provide pops of colour, from bright red berries to our imaginings of the spring to come. Brighten our day with your fiery Spirit!
AMEN

For all of us the world is getting smaller again, closer to being like the first lockdown: children at home, work enclosed by masks, the occasional unkindness of customers and the ever-encroaching loneliness. In this environment how can we demonstrate our care as Jesus requires?:

“I give you a New Commandment: love one another; as I have loved you, so you are to love one another.” (John 13:34,35) or again in Galatians 6:2 “Carry one another’s burdens and in this way you will fulfil Christ’s command.”

Our regular prayers can help lift that burden but how can we make them into something real today? I’ve never been very chatty on the telephone and my e-mail always sounds too much like business. I’m not a faithful correspondent but I love to write letters. My resolve into the spring will be to continue in prayer and also to crack out the fountain pen and postage stamps so distant friends will see that my care for them is real, as Christ commanded.

Lord God, Gatherer and Connector of our Cornerstone Fellowship, help all of us to live carefully and stay safe. Fill our days with a hundred tiny prayers on behalf of the people we can no longer meet nor touch. Spark our imagination with ideas for connection so all of us, regardless of distance, can know we are loved and cared for. In the name of Christ, whose command is to love, we pray.
AMEN

Lord God, our Fortress and our Safe Haven, protect the people whose lives of service protect our own. Thank you for the gift of organisation that records and distributes vaccines, thank you for the emergency services offering aid, thank you for the health professionals, heavily burdened mentally and physically and thank you for the shop workers filling shelves and crates and vans to keep us fed and clothed. Protect them all and grant them hope and respite and rest at day’s end. In the name of Christ, who asks us to carry each other’s’ burdens, we pray.
AMEN

We should get this day moving! I had better get busy with my letters and cards! May the God of love grant us all a day of fulfilment in Christ’s command to live and love and care and share. Blessings on this grey mid-January day.

Cheryl Montgomery